In 1989, I was a sixteen year old with a mother who was a very heavy sleeper. Nights meant I could finally “dress” in the outfit I’d collected by sometimes unsavory means. Mostly from shoplifting sometimes at the mall down the road. A black skirt, high heels, and a simple blouse weren’t something I could just carry to the cash register and buy. I knew stealing was wrong, but I could finally soothe that nagging feeling. The purr that quickly turned into a roar, and me into a monster who yelled at my friends incoherently. Maybe because they all seemed ...

I’m used to relying on my intellect. I’m no genius, but I have to survive on my wits, because my looks aren’t paying the bills. Over the course of my life, I mostly trusted my capacity to reason, as did co-workers and professors. So, once I went off my antidepressant meds, and OCD falsely told me that I was a pervert, a rapist, a murderer and about a million other things, you’d think I’d still be able to discern fact from fiction, and dismiss OCDs outrageous claims. Nope. For years, I viewed these strange thoughts and fears as the result ...

In retrospect, I’ve struggled with depression for as long as I can remember. But I didn’t know what was wrong with me — or if anything was even wrong with me — and I certainly had no idea that I could feel any differently until I was nearly 25-years-old (I’m 32 now). That’s when I went to my doctor, spurred by my dad being diagnosed with depression. He had described to me how he felt and I recognized it as the same thing I had felt all my life — most notably, the sense of going through the motions of ...